Reconciling ‘Desistance’ and ‘What Works’

Shadd Maruna & Ruth Mann

HM Inspectorate of Probation
Academic Insights 2019/1

FEBRUARY 2019
Contents

Foreword ................................................................................................................... 3

1. Introduction .......................................................................................................... 4

2. Two types of helpful research evidence ............................................................... 5

2.1 Commonalities: Narratives of hope ..................................................................... 5

2.2 Divergences: Programmes vs. lives ..................................................................... 5

2.3 Key findings...................................................................................................... 7

2.4 Implications for practice .................................................................................... 7

3. Conclusion: Hope for reconciliation? ................................................................. 9

References ..................................................................................................................10

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Foreword

HMI Probation is committed to reviewing, developing and promoting the evidence-base for
high-quality probation and youth offending services. Academic Insights are aimed at all
those with an interest in the evidence-base. We commission leading academics to present
their views on specific topics, assisting with informed debate and aiding understanding of
what helps and what hinders probation and youth offending services.
This report was kindly produced by Professor Shadd Maruna and Dr Ruth Mann,
summarising the development of the ‘desistance’ and ‘what works’ research literature and
noting key findings. Whilst there are differences between the two areas of work, the
continual development of ‘evidence-based practice’ will be best supported through a
recognition that both approaches are valuable and that they can be highly complementary.
There is still much to learn and the focus needs to be upon ensuring that all research,
whatever its type, is as robust and rigorous as possible, maximising its full potential. Within
the Inspectorate, we will continue to monitor the combined evidence-base when reviewing
the standards for inspecting probation services.

Dr Robin Moore
Head of Research

Authors’ Profiles

Dr. Shadd Maruna is a Professor of Criminology at Queen’s University Belfast and a

member of the Correctional Services Accreditation and Advice Panel. Previously, he has
worked at the University of Cambridge, the State University of New York, and Rutgers
University where he was Dean of the School of Criminal Justice. He received the
Howard League for Penal Reform’s inaugural Research Medal in 2013 and his book
Making Good was named the Outstanding Contribution to Criminology by the American
Society of Criminology in 2001.

Dr. Ruth Mann has worked for Her Majesty’s Prison & Probation Service for over 30
years. She spent many years overseeing programmes for men convicted of sexual
offending, and then several years as Head of Evidence. She is now supporting prisons
to develop rehabilitative cultures. Ruth has authored over 70 research articles and book
chapters examining rehabilitation and the impact of programmes on reoffending.

The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the policy
position of HMI Probation.

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1. Introduction

The term ‘desistance’ has – rather inexplicably for such an ugly and unusual piece of
academic jargon – found its way into professional practice and has become a near
ubiquitous buzzword in recent years. However, as pointed out in the Criminal Justice
Alliance’s Prospects for a Desistance Agenda (Moffatt, 2014) even though the term
‘desistance’ has become familiar, its meaning remains unclear to many in the justice system.
Indeed, ‘desistance’ appears to mean different things to different audiences making its value
uncertain.
The desistance concept has caught fire at almost precisely the same time as the concept of
‘evidence-based practice’ or ‘what works’, leading some to assume these terms are
synonymous and others to propose that they are in competition. Evidence-based practice
has generated enormous support at every level of the policy-making process. After all, who
could possibly be opposed to doing ‘what works’ and avoiding ‘what doesn’t’? However, like
with ‘desistance,’ the term ‘evidence-based practice’ is used far more often than it is
understood, and the lack of clear criteria for what qualifies as being ‘evidence-based’ is
dangerous precisely because the term sounds so indisputably desirable (Dodge & Mandel,
2012). Indeed, nearly all interventions now claim to be ‘evidence-based’ (or, when pushed,
‘evidence-informed’). Without agreed criteria for what this term means, such a claim is easy
to make and hard to dispute.
In this Academic Insight, we will seek to clarify some of the confusion around both
‘desistance’ and ‘what works’ research, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses, points
of divergence and areas of agreement. We will conclude that the two concepts are indeed
different in important ways but that they are highly complementary and need not be in
competition with one another.

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2. Two types of helpful research evidence

2.1 Commonalities: Narratives of hope

Both ‘what works’ and ‘desistance’ narratives are founded on a belief in what Maruna and
King (2009) call ‘moral redeemability’. This is the assumption that people can change or that
a person’s past is not his or her destiny. Under a moral redeemability belief system,
‘criminality’ is not a permanent trait of individuals, but rather an adaptation to a person’s life
circumstances that can be changed by altering those circumstances or self-understandings.

As such, both frameworks appeal to the Ministry of Justice’s departmental objective to

‘provide a prison and probation service that reforms offenders’ and to the mission statement
of HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) which involves ‘changing lives’ and reducing
reoffending through ‘rehabilitation’. These are clearly lofty goals. In fact, some might
suggest such aspirations are unrealistic or cynically out of touch with the limitations of
justice work. Critics feel that both ‘desistance’ and ‘what works’ talk (in prison in particular)
can be a smoke screen to distract from the damaging nature of justice interventions.

However, we argue that such ambitious aims may be essential for maintaining decent justice
services. Arguably, the mass incarceration/mass supervision crises that began in the United
States in the 1980s were only made possible (and certainly exacerbated) by the widespread
abandonment of the rehabilitative ideal (Allen, 1981) and the adoption of a ‘waste
management’ approach to ‘corrections’ centred around containment, surveillance and control
(Simon, 1991). Although seeking to create rehabilitative environments in our justice
agencies may in truth be overly ambitious, it may be better to at least aim high than to
succumb to a hopeless institutional narrative that could sustain human warehousing on a
massive scale as happened in the United States.

2.2 Divergences: Programmes vs. lives

Although ‘what works’ and ‘desistance’ research emerges from a shared impulse, they differ
in their approach and focus, with the former focusing on programmes and the latter
focusing on lives. To understand this difference, it can be helpful to consider parallels
outside of criminal justice. Imagine, for instance, that you wanted to help someone lose
weight. There are hundreds of ‘experts’ on the subject who are more than willing to share
their folk wisdom on the right diet, commercial programme, or latest fad in this regard. A lot
of this advice is contradictory, however, much of it is simply wrong, and some of it is even
dangerous. So, you decide to consult the best available research on the subject. This
research comes in two forms: ‘what works’ and (essentially) ‘desistance’ – although they do
not use that word.

First, you would almost certainly want to examine the large body of research on the
effectiveness of weight loss programmes, diets, support groups, medicines, and surgeries.
The best of this research involves large sample sizes, randomised control groups,
measurable outcome variables, and replication in systematic reviews and meta-analyses.

This is ‘what works’.

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Unfortunately, the verdict here is not particularly positive. If you think that reducing
recidivism is a difficult ambition with a weak evidence base, you may find comfort to know
that the research evidence on losing weight is even more depressing. Most available studies
are short-term and difficult to interpret (often paid for by those with direct interest in the
model). Yet, the best available research suggests that almost all of the different diets and
models work about as well (or rather, as poorly) as each other. That is, they usually lead to
short-term weight loss for the treatment group that is then quickly regained (Pagoto &
Appelhans, 2013; Sacks et al, 2009).

In lectures, Harvard Nutrition Professor Frank Sacks says he is often challenged about these
bleak findings:

‘People would say, ‘How can you say all these diets have no effect when I lost 100
pounds on diet X?’’
Dr. Sacks believes them. He knows people who have lost weight and kept it off with
diets, including a colleague in his department. ‘He lost 30 or 40 pounds in the 1970s
and kept it off all these years,’ Dr. Sacks said. But why him and not someone else
following the same regimen?
‘Beats me,’ Dr. Sacks said
(Kolata, 2016).

Indeed, in nearly every weight loss trial, there will be a small percentage of the treatment
group (and some of the control group as well) who will lose an enormous amount of weight
and keep it off consistently. Rather than dismissing such ‘success stories’ as
unrepresentative, however, researchers in that field of study recognise the experiences of
these individuals, rare although they may be, as vital for the understanding of the science of
weight loss (e.g., Chambers & Swanson, 2012). What social supports and structures do such
individuals have in place? How do their habitual patterns of thought change and differ from
weight regainers? What role does a change in the person’s identity or sense of self play in
the process, and how is this reinforced by those around the person?

This is ‘desistance’.

Desistance research takes success stories seriously. The research does not start with
programmes and aggregated outcomes, but individual lives and personal trajectories.
Recognising the individual as the agent of change, desistance research explores individuals’
social contexts, embedded social networks and subjective interpretations as keys to
understanding long-term life change.

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 2.3 Key findings

In the field of rehabilitation, researchers now know a lot about ‘what works’ in terms of
programmes as well as how the desistance process works for those who are able to make
real life changes. Yet, neither area of research is anywhere close to having all of the
answers for practitioners. Both ‘what works’ and ‘desistance’ research areas remain vibrant,
with much to learn and new findings emerging routinely (see e.g., Hart & Van Ginneken,
2017).

The strongest existing ‘what works’ research to date has established with reasonable
replication the effectiveness of programmes described as cognitive behavioural,
targeted to individuals with higher risk scores, that teach skills such as emotional
regulation and perspective taking. Evaluation research has also established that some
approaches do not ‘work’ – that is, are not associated with less reoffending than doing
nothing. For instance, so-called ‘boot camps’ or ‘Scared Straight’ type programmes intended
to deter at-risk young people both have been robustly evaluated and routinely show either
no impact or often a negative impact on participants’ justice outcomes. On the other hand,
most other types of interventions, sometimes dismissed as ‘correctional quackery’, simply
have not been robustly evaluated, so we do not have anywhere near enough information to
say whether they have ‘worked’ or not ‘worked’, let alone the bigger question of whether
they will ‘work’ again.

Over the past 30 years, there has been a distinct growth in desistance work. Indeed,
Paternoster and Bushway (2010: 1156) recently argued, “Theorizing and research about
desistance from crime is one of the most exciting, vibrant, and dynamic areas in criminology
today.” As such, desistance research has also started to accumulate findings across multiple
studies, although many of these studies are qualitative and exploratory in nature, so
accumulation has been more difficult than in the ‘what works’ research. The best known
findings in this regard suggest that people are more likely to desist when they have
strong ties to family and community, employment that fulfils them, recognition
of their worth from others, feelings of hope and self-efficacy, and a sense of
meaning and purpose in their lives (for reviews see Farrall & Calverley, 2005; Rocque,
2017).

2.4 Implications for practice

The terms ‘what works’ and ‘desistance’ refer to types of research activity, not specific
interventions or approaches. As such, they can sometimes be misunderstood when applied
to practice.

When practitioners say they are doing ‘what works’, they usually mean that they are
drawing on Risk Need Responsivity (RNR) principles or related products (see Andrews &
Bonta, 2014). They are likely targeting cognitive behavioural programmes which teach skills
such as emotional regulation and perspective taking to higher risk individuals. This can be
confusing as the terms ‘what works’ and ‘evidence-based justice’ are not owned by any one
theory or approach to therapy. RNR theory is based on rigorous evidence and risk/need
assessment tools produce important data that can be used in making decisions. However,
the whole point of the ‘what works’ movement is that all interventions, including RNR related
ones, need to be rigorously and repeatedly monitored and evaluated for effectiveness (see

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Campbell’s 1969 call for an ‘experimenting society’). The only allegiance of the ‘what works’
advocate is to evidence, not to particular models, and the only way to collect this sort of
evidence is to experiment with multiple types of approaches from restorative justice to
radical non-intervention in a fair competition.

In the same way, there is no singular ‘desistance’ intervention or practice. Many

organisations and interventions have sought to be ‘desistance based’ or ‘desistance
focussed’ in their approach, some even use the term desistance in the names of
interventions. Yet, desistance is not a brand, and indeed there is something inherently
contradictory about a ‘desistance programme’. When practitioners say they are doing
‘desistance focussed’ practice, therefore, this is usually to say that the work draws upon
some or all of the following in designing and delivering interventions:

a) the findings of desistance research;

b) the expertise of individuals who have themselves desisted from crime (‘wounded
healers’, ‘credible messengers’, ‘experts by experience’);

c) the strengths of those in the justice system (as opposed to correcting deficits), for
instance, through roles as peer mentors, artists, teachers or community benefactors;

d) the strengths of the families and wider communities of individuals in the justice
system (including employers, faith communities, and victims/survivors and their
advocates) (see e.g., McNeill, et al, 2012; Porporino, 2010).

Importantly, then, ‘desistance-based’ practice could also be ‘evidence-based’ practice (or

‘what works’) if the desistance-focussed work were to be subjected to rigorous evaluation
research (see e.g., Netto, Carter & Bonnell, 2014). In other fields of research, this sort of
symbiosis is common. Take the field of speech pathology. One of the most common
problems leading families to turn to the help of professional speech pathologists is the
phenomenon of stuttering in childhood. The development of effective treatment has been
difficult to say the least as those who remember the film The King’s Speech will recall. Yet, a
majority of children with this condition appear to desist from stuttering within a few years of
onset without any formal treatment. Research on how this process of desistance works
(e.g., studies of natural recovery) has itself informed the design of formal treatment
interventions. Further, these ‘desistance-based’ interventions have subsequently been
positively evaluated using ‘what works’ methodology, including randomised controlled trials,
in a perfect example of a pluralistic model of evidence-based practice (Finn, 2007).

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3. Conclusion: Hope for reconciliation?

The desistance journeys of former prisoners and probation service users might also be
useful in helping practitioners design effective interventions. However, the two research
literatures are rarely joined up in this way. This is somewhat puzzling (see also Herzog-
Evans (2018) who highlights the potential for new research avenues and experimentation
opportunities through increased collaboration). Returning to the analogy of weight loss, why
would anyone wanting to help others lose weight not want to consult both types of
information – programme evaluations and life stories? Aren’t both forms of valid ‘evidence’
useful for practice? We believe they are – but not everyone agrees.
Advocates of ‘what works’ might say that the desistance approaches above are ‘anecdotal’
and every good scientist knows that anecdote is (allegedly) the enemy of good science.
Human beings are naturally drawn to stories and our brains are wired to learn through
narratives and parables (Gottschall, 2012), but scientists must try to avoid being persuaded
by individual cases in this way for fear of being led astray by some memorable but
unrepresentative stories. Without question, desistance research tends to have small sample
sizes. Moreover, interviewing a truly representative or random sample of ‘desisters’ is
impossible for ethical and practical reasons, so there will always be selection bias of varying
degrees in desistance research. Likewise, those who see the world from a desistance
perspective are probably equally as sceptical of programme evaluation findings as those
trained to find ‘what works’ are of desistance research.
Our view, however, is that such methodological paradigm wars are a time-wasting
distraction from the shared goal of helping people turn their lives around. Fundamentally, as
with the science of losing weight, the science of crime reduction is simply too difficult and
frankly too weak for partisans on either side to declare a monopoly on useful evidence.
Neither the ‘what works’ movement nor ‘desistance’ research is anywhere close to revealing
the secret formula guaranteed to reduce crime (or lose weight), and never will. Human
behaviour is simply too complex to be predictable in ways similar to the laws of physics or
chemistry, and we should be thankful for that.
That is not to say that criminal justice agencies should not be guided by social science
evidence in the work they do. Far from it. Rather, we need all the science we can get –
programme evaluations and narrative desistance studies – to make sense out of the
complexity of crime. We need to strive to make both types of work as robust and rigorous
as possible, and, crucially, we need to learn to merge the two types of evidence together as
therein lies the real promise for evidence-based practice.

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